Hot damn, guys and gals!

The cicadas are coming and if you're in the Midwest or the Southeast, they will be more plentiful than ever. Or at least since the Louisiana Purchase.

This spring, for the first time since 1803, two cicada groups known as Brood XIX, or the Great Southern Brood, and Brood XIII, or the Northern Illinois Brood, are set to appear at the same time, in what is known as a dual emergence.

The last time the Northern Illinois Brood's 17-year cycle aligned with the Great Southern Brood's 13-year period, Thomas Jefferson was president. After this spring, it'll be another 221 years before the broods, which are geographically adjacent, appear together again.


The World Hasn’t Seen Cicadas Like This Since 1803 - The New York Times

What to do with all those l'il guys? Chow down, baby!

Maryland Cicadas
Yield: 8 servings

1/2 cup Old Bay seasoning
2 tablespoons salt
4 quarts water
1 (12 fluid ounce) can beer (optional)
8 red potatoes, quartered
2 large sweet onions, cut in wedges
2 pounds lean smoked sausage, cut in 2-inch lengths
8 ears fresh corn, broken in half
4 pounds large cicadas

Directions:

1. In an 8-quart pot, bring Old Bay, salt, water and beer to a boil. Add potatoes and onions; cook over high heat for 8 minutes.
2. Add smoked sausage to potatoes and onions; continue to cook on high for 5 minutes. Add corn to pot; continue to boil for 7 minutes. Add cicadas, cook for 5 minutes.
3. Drain cooking liquid. Pour contents of pot into several large bowls, shallow pails, or mound on a paper-covered picnic table. Sprinkle with additional Old Bay if desired.

Just one of many, many recipes for this highly nutritious lil critter!

Not that I have, but, properly prepared, I'd give 'em a try. My wife, on the other hand....

I think we need some intrepid forum volunteers from the states blessed with this bounty to man up, chow down, and document the experience with photos! (Pix of screaming wives and children, when they learn what that tasty dinner you prepared actually was, are encouraged. Whoever gets most "likes" to be awarded the latest Hummer or other vehicle by your financial tycoon or celebrity of choice!*)

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* Or, maybe not, but it is the possibility, however remote, that counts in this proposed culinary challenge.

Does this mean ammo prices are going up?

We used to love to shoot them with bb guns when I was a kid. Hours of good clean entertainment. Also helped quiet them down for a little while.

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Or something like that . . .

I wonder which ones we have here? It’s been quite a while since I’ve heard them

EVERYTHING means ammo prices are going up!

I have to agree with your wife, she is a smart woman. I’m not that hungry yet.

Word has it they're delicious when deep fried!

Attached Images

IMG_6929.jpg (113.5 KB, 312 views)

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"I also cook."

The copperheads will eat em’.

For your listening pleasure...

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Music/Sports/Beer fan

BBs or snakes ?

OK.. But what caliber for cicadas?

They haven't been the same since internal locks and MIM.

I remember when the mid-Ohio brood was awake in the early 2000's As I drove past a semi on I-71 the Cicadas were louder than the semi!

Ivan

I'll bet you could air fry 'em, too.
As for caliber, .17 should be plenty.

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Some collect art; I shoot it!

I read somewhere that it takes a minimum of a .40 S&W to kill one, preferably 10mm or a 45ACP because a 38spl or 9mm will bounce right off.
(starts popping popcorn)

Oh, great. In my part of rural Georgia, you can't sleep with the windows open in the late spring / early summer for the noise of the cicadas. 2024 should be exceptionally noisy.

Said it before, will say it again: anything that ends in Rigby. 🥤🍿

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50 Years of DSOTM

It’s the cicadapocalypse!

I much prefer crunchy frogs.

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Music/Sports/Beer fan

Better check your popcorn chicken pretty dang close for a while.

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The best I can with what I got

I'll just leave them for the outdoor critters. Nice-looking recipe, tho, OP.

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Inconsistently consistent

All them poor folk who have to wait til' spring to hear them... Lots of shooting as a kid without hearing protection allows me to hear them all year..

Larry

I like to hear them but I’m 3/4ths deaf.

I hear carp love to eat them.

Maybe its time to got carp fishing this summer!

I loved carp fishing growing up.

That may be a welcome source of protein under the new economy.

I think I’ll just stick to popcorn chicken, thank you.

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I told you not to use Lifebuoy

I'm not eating bugs.

Period

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BTDT, Got The T-Shirt

Our recipe has worked for years.
Catch, rinse in warm water, quick freeze to kill them and whatever they are carrying, thaw, dredge corn meal, egg and panko mixes, deep fry until golden brown, throw in trash and order a pizza.

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paws for friendship

You forgot the kale

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"I drank WHAT?" (Socrates)

No bug dinner for me.
Cicadas are such a fixture in the south that I scarcely notice them any more except to watch for the copperheads.

I hear them 24/7. It's how my tinnitus presents itself. Welcome to my world.

My parents retired to Otto, NC in the 80's about 5 mile north of the state line off 441. Always heard them in the evening whenever I visited and wondered if they hatch every 13 - 17 years why would I hear them every year? Overlapping broods or a different breed?

I've always wondered that, too. Here, we have the same green ones every year. Apparently ours don't know about prime numbers, or can't read a calendar.

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protocalldesign.com

The elites who met in Davos recently sure are pushing that.

Ugh You couldn't get me to eat bugs with a pistol to my head.

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Paul
Salome, AZ

"You will eat ze bugs." (Klaus Schwab, WEF Chair)

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Music/Sports/Beer fan

You vill eat the bugs, you vill have nothing, und you vill like it.

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BTDT, Got The T-Shirt

If a lobster ain't an ocean going bug, I don't know what else it is. Pretty tasty no matter what you call it.




I'll pass on the cicadas, however.

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The best I can with what I got

About 30 years ago,
I had a gunshop at the time,
I was driving on the highway to go to Turin in northern Italy
where the Italian Colt distributor was located.
I was crossing the Po Valley, the largest cultivated area in Italy.
When I was hit by a huge swarm of locusts
banging on the car.
The whole car was covered by their pulped bodies,
as if someone had spilled hundreds of kilos of disgusting greenish cream.
the car skidded and there was no visibility.
I managed to get to a refueling station and cleaned the glass and radiator.
Maybe the most disgusting thing that happened to me.

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Marcello

According to the FDA and USDA I unknowingly consume over a pound of bugs every year. Also science has proven that flies "download" every time they land.

Shellfish are nothing more than aquatic shop-vacs.

Look up "Normal microbiota".

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Music/Sports/Beer fan

Ah yes, memories of being pelted in the face on the Loveland bike trail!

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Common sense isn't so common.

And driving your car over Pop Rocks and Rice Krispies.

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Music/Sports/Beer fan

Crabs anyone?

Not since my hippie days.

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Music/Sports/Beer fan

Take a regular size brown lunch bag and fill the bag with these critters...crinkle the bag shut loosely...throw bag in your pond and let the pond water slowly open the bag...your fish will go NUTS eating them...especially if you have catfish or largemouth bass..it is a sight to behold...looks like an attack of a bunch of piranhas...

A trillion?
Who counted them?

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213th FBINA

Wouldn't eat rice bugs, won't eat cicadas. Nope.

Haven’t heard a Locust in years now.

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James
On the Llano Estacado

WEF food. Eat zee bugs.